Banning gays from seminary stirs U.S. debate

Word that a soon-to-be-released Vatican document will signal homosexuals are unwelcome in Roman Catholic seminaries even if they are celibate has devastated gay clergy and raised doubts among conservatives about whether an outright ban can be enforced.

A Vatican official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the document has not been released, said yesterday that the upcoming "instruction" from the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education will reaffirm the church's belief that homosexuals should not be ordained.

The Rev. Thomas Krenik, who taught for 10 years at St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota and wrote the guidebook "Formation for Priestly Celibacy," worries a blanket ban on candidates who are gay will re-create the conditions the Vatican wants to eradicate.

"For some men who happened to be homosexually oriented, they would go further in the closet," Krenik said. "That would be my fear, that this could become an even worse problem."

However, some said they believe a ban is necessary.

James Hitchcock, a church historian at St. Louis University and conservative commentator on Catholicism, said he takes that position, considering that a study the U.S. bishops commissioned from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice found that most of the alleged clergy sex-abuse victims since 1950 were adolescent boys.

A gay U.S. priest, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals from church leaders, said he and other gay clergy and seminarians felt "absolute horror" when they heard about the anticipated ban.

"I've spoken to gay priests who feel demoralized. I've heard straight priests say that they're embarrassed by it. I've heard priests both straight and gay seriously considering leaving," he said.

James Weston, president of the local chapter of Dignity, a national group for gay, lesbian and bisexual Catholics and their supporters, said: "It's a terrible thing. They're being judged in advance, presuming that if you're gay you can't be celibate."

Weston, a retired Spanish professor and a former religious brother for 37 years, is also angry because the document, seen as a response to the church's clergy sex-abuse crisis, "assumes that homosexuals are pedophiles. I think there's confusion on the part of the hierarchy between priests who are gay and priests who are pedophiles."

Hitchcock, the commentator, conceded the policy will be difficult to enforce, since candidates for the priesthood can hide their sexual orientation. He's also concerned that gays dedicated to remaining celibate will be unfairly excluded.

Peter Miller, president of Northwest Laity for Truth, an organization of conservative Catholics in Western Washington, said he also would question such a policy's effectiveness "because things coming from the Vatican are only as effective as people in place locally will be in seeing it through and making it happen."

Presumably, gay men who have been ordained would be allowed to continue working as priests.

In recent decades, Vatican officials have stated several times that gays should not become priests because their sexual orientation is "intrinsically disordered" and makes them unsuitable for ministry.

The Vatican document is scheduled to be distributed within weeks, just as an evaluation of all 229 U.S. seminaries begins under the direction of the same Vatican agency developing the seminary statement.

The review, called an Apostolic Visitation, was ordered by Pope John Paul II in response to the U.S. clergy sex-abuse crisis, which gained widespread attention in 2002. Among the questions evaluators will ask is whether "there is evidence of homosexuality in the seminary," according to the agency's guide for the inspections.

Estimates of the number of gay seminarians and priests vary from 25 percent to 50 percent of about 42,500 priests in the United States. Whatever the percentage, many Catholics are worried the priesthood is becoming a profession for gays. As the abuse crisis intensified, church officials discussed their concerns more openly and more urgently, even though experts on sex offenders said that homosexuals were no more likely than heterosexuals to abuse children.

Critics ranging from gay-rights groups to advocates for victims have accused the Vatican of scapegoating homosexuals to divert attention from the church's failures to protect children. Other seminary leaders have said a ban was pointless, since many clergy candidates do not realize they are gay until after they are enrolled or ordained.

Krenik questioned whether the problem of subcultures of sexually active gays was as acute as the Vatican believes. He said sexual activity was more prevalent a decade or so ago, before seminary administrators started clamping down on sexual misconduct.

But Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, who leads the Archdiocese for the Military Services in Washington and is coordinating the seminary evaluations, said last week that the church wants to "stay on the safe side" by enrolling seminarians who can remain celibate.

"There are some priests, I don't think there are many, some ordained people with same-sex attractions and they've done very well" remaining celibate, he said. "But generally speaking, in my experience, the pressures are strong in an all-male atmosphere."

Several priests challenged that argument and noted that heterosexual priests face their own temptations: The overwhelming majority of lay ministers who work side by side with clergy are women, yet no one has suggested banning heterosexuals from the priesthood.

Seattle Times reporter Janet I. Tu contributed to this report.

Material from the Religion News Service is included in this report.